Tags: the bird with the crystal plumage

It's a sight both thrilling and familiar -- the winding staircase, especially when seen from directly above or below. Many directors and cinematographers use such shots for their guaranteed visual punch -- the landings create artificial frames, the spirals imbue the center of the screen with a sense of the infinite. Plus, the practical purpose of the stairway suggests a journey and not an easy one. Different films have used the winding staircase to evoke different things -- vertigo, insanity, a descent into hell, and even female genitalia. This Thanksgiving weekend, we give our gratitude to one of the great visual tropes in the horror-thriller by presenting six films with staircases we love.

As usual, click the thumbnails to open a larger version of the picture in a new window.(read more...)

When we decided on "Foreign Horror" as the overall theme for our Shocktober review marathon this year, we made a conscious decision to leave out Italy for the most part, despite it having the second-highest horror output for a non-English-speaking country (after Japan). The fact is, we have plenty of Italian horror covered on the site, and we devoted two and a half weeks of last year's Shocktober to two of the country's best-known horror directors, Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava.(read more...)